I’m not an expert by any means, but I read the study linked, and this sounds like such a massive stretch. They have one data sample which they blended with a previous data sample, added in a huge amount of assumptions, then drew a conclusion they were looking for.
That’s kind of how it works with these things. There’s not many samples to work with. One of the big reasons there’s been so much revision and change over the past few decades is more samples have been found or existing ones have been re-examined using new techniques. Those earlier ideas were frequently based off just a few bone fragments and a whole lot of extrapolation.
I’m not an expert by any means, but I read the study linked, and this sounds like such a massive stretch. They have one data sample which they blended with a previous data sample, added in a huge amount of assumptions, then drew a conclusion they were looking for.
That’s kind of how it works with these things. There’s not many samples to work with. One of the big reasons there’s been so much revision and change over the past few decades is more samples have been found or existing ones have been re-examined using new techniques. Those earlier ideas were frequently based off just a few bone fragments and a whole lot of extrapolation.
It was shocking to learn how few fossils and fragments we have, hominid and otherwise.